Saturday, February 15, 2014

The Washington Post’s neocon editorial page is back baiting President Barack Obama to issue more military ultimatums to the Syrian government, presumably with the hope that a failure to comply will get the ball rolling toward another U.S.-enforced ”regime change.”In one more lead editorial demanding action on Syria, the Post’s editors picked up on a slanted Post news article which had Obama admitting that his diplomatic initiatives are ”failing,” though Obama didn’t use the word in a Tuesday press conference with French President Francois Hollande.Read the entire article

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

As a U.S. senator and Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton often followed a neocon-style foreign policy, backing the Iraq War, teaming up with Defense Secretary Robert Gates on an Afghan War “surge,” and staking out an even more hawkish stance than Gates on Libya, Robert Parry reports.Most Democratic power-brokers appear settled on Hillary Clinton as their choice for President in 2016 – and she holds lopsided leads over potential party rivals in early opinion polls – but there are some warning flags flying, paradoxically, hoisted by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his praise for the former First Lady, U.S. senator and Secretary of State.Read the entire article

Saturday, February 08, 2014

Mrs. WC made WC listen to the entire Official Republican Response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech last week. This was the Official Response as delivered by U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers. That’s not to be confused with the other three or four Republican responses, the clearest sign yet of the shattered state of the G.O.P.

What made Rep. Rodgers’ speech so painful to hear was that it was almost entirely content-free. Lots of platitudes and feel good personal narratives; no ideas. But Rep. Rodgers did offer one substantive fact: one of her constituents, “Bette in Spokane,” faced a $700 a month health insurance premium increase “because of Obamacare.” The Spokane-based Spokesman-Review, not exactly a bastion of liberal journalism, tracked down “Bette in Spokane” and the full story is utterly different.

Potential GOP presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio offered a glimpse into how he would act as commander in chief, saying the U.S. should "overtly" arm Syrian rebels. The Florida lawmaker is reportedly mulling a run at the Republican nomination in 2016 and has called for a national and foreign policy that is more in line with the hawkish interventionism of 2008 presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., than Obama's narrower approach that requires a direct and clear U.S. interest.

If Rubio wins the White House in 2016, that might change. The potential Republican candidate, in a statement issued late Wednesday, revealed an interventionist flavor to the foreign and national security policy approach he would bring to the White House Situation Room.

Rubio blasted the Obama administration, saying "we are going to be living with the consequences of the Obama administration's failed Syria policy for decades to come. It is time for the administration to increase pressure on Assad instead of giving him more room to maneuver," Rubio said, in an apparent reference to Obama's decision last year to hold off on air strikes when Assad agreed to give up his chemical weapons.

Tuesday, February 04, 2014

"Neocon war hawks" upset at the resurgence of Sunni and al Quaeda in Anbar in Iraq are waving the "bloody shirt" to invoke the memory of Fallujah, urging U.S. intervention. To understand the Middle East it is necessary to have a map of the area, be aware of who borders who and who are Sunni and who are Shia.

Iraq, was a Sunni dominated state with a large Shia minority until the US invasion in 2003. Iraq had fought an inconclusive war against Shia dominated Iran, from 1980 to 1988, ending in a stalemate. Iraq remained a counter balance to Iran.

Iran's long-term rival, Saudi Arabia, is Sunni dominated, and with its powerful economic position has rivaled Iran for control of the Persian Gulf promoting jihadists, like al Quaeda, and spreading its hard line wahhabi brand of Islam.

During his State of the Union speech, Obama said he will end the decade-plus occupation of Afghanistan in 2014. This may be another one of Obama’s illusory promises (remember you can keep your doctor and closing down Gitmo?), but that didn’t stop a key neocon from climbing up on his hobby horse and demanding more tax money and USAian lives be flushed down a rat hole. Frederick Kagan, a neocon darling at the pro-illegal war American Enterprise Institute think tank, wrote on Jan 27 in the WSJ that leaving Afghanistan would amount to a victory for AQ, and he expanded on this to Faux News after Obama’s teleprompter recitation. But then we should expect Kagan to say this, since the war in Afghanistan is one of his pet projects. Back in December, Rajiv Chandrasekaran writing for the WaPo examined the relationship between Kagan, his wife Kimberly, and David Petraeus back when he was the top US commander in Afghanistan. Chandrasekaran writes:

Although Fred Kagan said he and his wife wanted no pay in part to remain ‘completely independent,’ the extraordinary arrangement raises new questions about the access and influence Petraeus accorded to civilian friends while he was running the Afghan war. The four-star general made the Kagans de facto senior advisers, a status that afforded them numerous private meetings in his office, priority travel across the war zone and the ability to read highly secretive transcripts of intercepted Taliban communications, according to current and former senior US military and civilian officials who served in the headquarters at the time.

Monday, February 03, 2014

You have to hand it to the neocons; they never give up on their single-minded agenda of promoting wars against Israel’s Muslim “enemies,” even after the disastrous war in Iraq. The big difference now is that the neocon strategy is to endlessly insist that the U.S. government issue ultimatums of war unless a target country acquiesces to some demand.

The apparent neocon hope is that at some point the target won’t or can’t do something, thus requiring a U.S. military assault to maintain American “credibility.” The Washington Post’s neocon editors are the bellwether for this approach as they mix outraged propaganda against the targets with outrage over any perceived “failure” of the targets to comply — and then over President Barack Obama’s hesitancy to act.

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Congress Owned by UnAmerican Foreign Interests

"Conservatives are accustomed to liberals not understanding the zoology of our movement. But the use and abuse of the term 'neoconservative' has exceeded even the high allowance for cliché and ignorance generally afforded to those who write or talk about conservatism from outside the conservative ant farm. In fact, neoconservative has become a Trojan Horse for vast arsenal of ideological attacks and insinuations. For some it means Jewish conservative. For others it means hawk. A few still think it means squishy conservative or ex-liberal. And a few don't even know what the word means, they just think it makes them sound knowledgeable when they use it."